Rapid Shift

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The following article was published in The Sociological Review 66, no. 2 (March 2018). Updated 2018.02.05. The disappointments of the online economy – for instance, user surveillance and systemic labor abuses – stem at least in part from its failures to meaningfully share ownership and governance with relevant stakeholders. Under the banner of ‘platform cooperativism’, an emerging network of cooperative developers, entrepreneurs, labor …

A Nissan Leaf electric car on the production line in Sunderland. Photograph: Anna Gowthorpe/PA Ministers have been urged to bring forward their 2040 ban on new diesel and petrol car sales by a decade, a move which an environmental thinktank said would almost halve oil imports and largely close the gap in the UK’s climate targets. The Green Alliance said a more …

By Sam Pizzigati, Inequality.org, March 2018 Last month’s homicidal horror at Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida has Americans searching for answers to the most elemental question a parent can ever ask. How can we, Americans want to know, protect our kids? Overwhelming majorities of us, the polls tell us, feel that the answer involves some sort of meaningful limits on …

Quantifying Land and People Exposed to Sea‐Level Rise with no Mitigation and 1.5°C and 2.0°C Rise in Global Temperatures to Year 2300 Limiting global warming to 1.5-2C above pre-industrial could greatly reduce the number of people exposed to sea level rise in 2300. The proportion of the global population exposed to sea level rise in 2300 is projected to be …

April 12, 2018 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM EDTWashington, DC Every day, billions of people breathe dirty air. Join activists on the frontlines of the fight against pollution around the world as they share insights from their local clean-up efforts, innovative solutions to improving air quality and more. Join the conversation: #BeatPollution In cities around the world, air pollution is reaching …

The U.S. now spends more money on so-called healthcare than any other nation on Earth—$3.5 trillion a year. Yet, public health continues to deteriorate, thanks to an environment contaminated by more than 84,000 industrial and agricultural chemicals, and a steady diet of cheap, unhealthy grub dished up in supermarkets, restaurants, schools and institutional settings. Even the government admits that about …

https://www.odi.org/features/securing-safe-roads It is morning in Kibera, a neighbourhood about seven miles from the centre of Nairobi. Smartly dressed young children – white socks pulled up to their knees, school jumpers on and bags over their shoulders – will wave to their parents and set off for school. Among them is Purity, who walks for two hours a day along roads …

By Joshua Gordon, FleetCarma, February 28, 2018 Major automakers are making the transition to electric vehicles (EVs). BMW, Ford, General Motors, and Volkswagen are all committed to bringing EVs to market in the coming years. In this article, we focus on the positives and drawbacks of owning an EV. Furthermore, as EVs become increasingly relevant to fleet operators, we discuss the …

Excerpt from Transport section of 2017 “We are still in” report With the largest (China), fourth largest (Germany) and sixth largest (India) vehicle manufacturing nations(164) announcing they are going to phase out the internal combustion engine, and with other countries like Britain and France joining in,165 the auto industry can see their future is in EVs manufactured at scale. Medium- and heavy-duty vehicles …

By John H. Cushman Jr. and David Hasemyer, Inside Climate News, 29 Mar 2018 With a sharp rebuke, a federal judge on Thursday rejected Exxon’s attempt to shut down two state investigations into whether the oil giant misled investors for years about the risks of climate change. U.S. District Court Judge Valerie Caproni dismissed Exxon’s complaint with prejudice, meaning the company can’t refile …